SF transit chief focuses on basics as critics call for...

1of2Ed Reiskin (right), chief of operations for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, chats with a passenger while riding a streetcar up Market Street. He has pledged to make the bus system more reliable.Photo: Jessica Christian / The Chronicle

The chief of transportation in San Francisco wore a penitent expression, quietly emerging from a recent performance review on the fourth floor of City Hall.

It had been a rough month for Ed Reiskin. He took the top job at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency seven years ago, with pledges to focus on everyday commuters and make the city’s Muni bus system more reliable. Now, with a new mayor in office, he’s come under a microscope.

Bus service is erratic. Major infrastructure projects are delayed. A construction worker was struck and killed by a steel beam in the Twin Peaks Tunnel, prompting accusations that the agency isn’t vetting its contractors. Mayor London Breed described all of those problems in a scalding letter to Reiskin, which she sent Monday — the eve of his annual review from the MTA Board of Directors.

At 6 the next evening, Reiskin stepped out of the closed-door meeting and into a throng of reporters. He offered a limp smile. His voice was calm and resolute.

A trash fire on the tracks of San Francisco’s Muni subway caused delays Wednesday, , and many commuters were diverted onto crowded buses.

Photo: Steve Rubenstein / The Chronicle

But the letter raised speculation that he might not hang on to his $342,483-a-year post, which brought up the question: Who might step up to solve Muni’s intractable problems?

“San Francisco has one of the oldest, largest, most complex transit systems in the country — it’s a beast to operate,” said transportation consultant Bonnie Nelson. She noted that the agency has cycled through many directors, “and the common theme is that it’s just a really hard job.”

Only the SFMTA board has the power to fire Reiskin. Yet the mayor holds sway over that board because she appoints its members.

After Breed’s rebuke, board directors seemed divided over the 51-year-old transit chief. The board’s chair, Cheryl Brinkman, praised his intelligence and work ethic. Others had doubts about him.

“The mayor’s letter was very incisive,” Board Director Art Torres said, applauding Breed for “taking on the issue so directly.”

Vice chair Malcolm Heinicke said he’d directed Reiskin to improve Muni’s day-to-day operations and to have a more open line of communication with residents and political leaders.

“Reiskin is a humble man, but the agency is perceived to be arrogant,” Heinicke said. “There’s a perception that once a plan or a project is designed, feedback is not listened to.”

Heading San Francisco’s mass-transit system has always been viewed as a tough assignment, with critics blasting away from all sides: strong unions, pressures from City Hall, advocacy groups that seem to pack every hearing. While some politicians and activists are pressing for a more forward-thinking leader to replace Reiskin, others wonder where the city would find that person.

San Francisco’s transportation system has unique challenges, with its multigenerational stock of rolling vehicles — ranging from classic cable cars to glossy light rail — that operate on the same city streets as everyone else. Besides running Muni, Reiskin also oversees traffic management, parking, taxis, bicycle and pedestrian programs, which means he’s constantly balancing the interests of one group against those of another.

And not everyone has the appetite for endless political tumult.

“People have really strong feelings about transportation,” said Reiskin, sitting in his spartan office Thursday morning. A man had approached him outside the buiding a half hour earlier, offering a reassuring handshake.

“I’m sorry they’re all giving you such a hard time, Ed,” the man said.

Muni has long served as a colorful symbol of broken infrastructure and congestion problems in San Francisco. Willie Brown vowed to fix the beleaguered buses in 100 days during his 1995 mayoral campaign — a promise that sank three years later, when a well-publicized summer meltdown led to two-hour delays, causing riders to give up and walk.

Passengers wait for a Muni bus in front of barriers surrounding a construction site on Mission Street and Van Ness Avenue.

Photo: Michael Short / Special to The Chronicle

The most recent slowdown happened when SFMTA poached drivers from popular lines to run shuttles around the Twin Peaks Tunnel, which closed for repairs during July and August, and reopened on Saturday. The closure came at an inopportune time, Reiskin said, because many Muni drivers were tied up in training for new assignments, or learning to drive the agency’s new railcars. As a result, riders experienced citywide delays that caught many people off-guard.

More Information

ridership systemwide

2010: 676,800

2011: 669,800

2012: 701,300

2013: 703,300

2014: 705,700

2015: 711,000

2016: 726,100

2017: 715,700

on-time performance yearly average

2013: 59.5%

2014: 57.2%

2015: 59.2%

2016: 58.7%

2017: 56.2%

2018: 56.6%

Source: San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency

Read More

That seemed to irritate Breed, who chided Reiskin in her letter for a disruption the MTA should have anticipated.

Some political observers described the letter as a shrewd political move. Breed had seized on an issue that voters always complain about. If Muni improves by next year — when Breed is up for re-election — she can take credit for it. If the system continues to deteriorate, she can push Reiskin out.

“The mayor is making it very clear that she’s going to put her imprint on the SFMTA,” said Jason McDaniel, an associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University. He noted that solving the city’s transportation woes was a point of contention in the mayor’s race.

When Reiskin took the job in 2011, he was a novice in the transit world, but had plenty of experience running other embattled city departments. He’d helmed the 311 call center for complaints and the Department of Public Works.

At SFMTA, he promised to spend a lot of time out of the office, talking to riders, operators and mechanics. With his penchant for wearing secondhand suits and biking to news conferences, he cut an unassuming figure — a stark contrast to his larger-than-life predecessor, Nathaniel Ford, who now heads the Transportation Authority in Jacksonville, Fla.

“He’s known for a very humble kind of leadership,” said former SFMTA board chair Tom Nolan. “Even the job title — Nat Ford called himself ‘CEO and president.’ Ed wanted to change that to ‘director.’”

Despite the agency’s recent fumbles, Reiskin has improved aspects of mass transit in San Francisco during his tenure.

Muni and bart riders leave the Civic Center station on Tuesday, April 10, 2018, in San Francisco, Calif.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

In 2012 he began overhauling and expanding Muni’s fleet, replacing the old diesel buses with hybrids and swapping the heavy railcars of yore with a sleeker, easier-to-maintain model. That led to a renaissance, of sorts, and Muni transformed from the oldest vehicle stock in the nation to the newest.

Reiskin also started the free Muni program for low-income youths, seniors and disabled people. And he increased the number of annual service hours from 3.2 million in 2011, to 3.8 million this year, by running more buses along key routes, like the 38-Geary and the 5-Fulton. While transit ridership is dropping in most cities across the nation, Muni’s average weekday ridership systemwide has grown from 676,800 in 2010 to 717,700 last year.

At the same time, Muni’s on-time performance has dipped, from about 60 percent in 2013 to 57 percent this year.

“If there’s a theme in our budget, it’s investing in the basics of the system: putting safe, reliable transit on the street,” said John Haley, the agency’s director of transit.

But Reiskin’s focus on nuts-and-bolts problem-solving opens him to criticism that he’s not a visionary. He admits he’s been slow to adapt to new forms of mobility, such as ride-hail services and electric scooters. Some transit advocates pine for a more far-reaching, urbanist leader like former New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, who crisscrossed a vast metropolis with bike lanes and pedestrian plazas.

Rachel Hyden, head of the San Francisco Transit Riders advocacy group, credited Reiskin for new buses and red transit-only lanes that SFMTA is painting throughout the city. But she’d like to see bolder reforms, such as wide curbs to accommodate electric scooters, buses and bike shares, instead of cars.

“Ed compromises way too often,” Hyden said. “He needs to push back when people don’t want their parking removed.”

Others assail Reiskin for maintaining an insular culture at the SFMTA, where managers make key decisions without gathering feedback from bus drivers and passengers. That’s what went wrong with the Twin Peaks Tunnel closure, said Roger Marenco, a bus driver and president of the Transport Workers Union.

“It’s upper management thinking they know the streets when they don’t,” he said.

A few days after Breed sent her letter to Reiskin, he wrote a four-page, point-by-point response. It promised noticeable service improvements in the next three months.

“This is my dream job,” he said, riding the elevator to his seventh-floor office Thursday.

For a moment, his eyes brightened. “I’ll serve for as long as the board gives me the opportunity.”

Rachel Swan covers transportation for The Chronicle. She joined the paper in 2015 and has also reported on politics in Oakland and San Francisco.

Previously, Rachel held staff positions at the SF Weekly and the East Bay Express, where she covered technology, law and the arts. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley.